


A Boy And His Dog

by xusu



Category: Mother 3
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-02-27 01:19:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18728770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xusu/pseuds/xusu
Summary: An emotional exploration of Lucas’s experience after the events of Chapter 1 and his relationship with Boney, who is vastly underappreciated as his most loyal family member.





	A Boy And His Dog

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally going to be my first ever fic that i’d post publicly online before my gothic story but unlike that one this is a finished oneshot. i’m still not entirely confident in my writing since i don’t do it often (i draw WAY more; my twitter is @pyramidserum and my tumblr is weirdmageddon) but it’s fun and a good stress reliever.
> 
> this was an idea ive had in my head for a while; boney being there for lucas and lucas having strange nightmares after what happened. 
> 
> i also made art for a few scenes while working on it (though id suggest looking at them after you finish it):  
>  https://twitter.com/pyramidserum/status/1122927587951566848  
>  https://twitter.com/pyramidserum/status/1130914606074011648  
>  https://twitter.com/pyramidserum/status/1131267204559855617 
> 
> feedback always appreciated 🖤

The house was so quiet that night. So very eerily silent. With exception to the very few crickets making their noises, maybe just two or three, chirping in the tree outside.

Lucas was in bed again. He had been sleeping all day, only desiring to shut himself out from the pain of the world. Earlier that week, feeling so happy. Getting ready to leave Grandpa Alec’s cabin and head back home, hiking down south through the mountains and forest. All that excitement left his soul when the forest grew engulfed in flames. The images of mother having been slaughtered right in front of his wide, blue eyes bounced around in his skull and thoroughly haunted him and tore him apart from the inside. He grimaced, remembering the thought of the biologically modified Drago piercing her chest.

And Claus...

He turned in their bed—his bed now, facing to his right, where Claus sleeps... or, slept. He’s going to have to get used to that now.

Even though his lids were half-closed, the waterworks began again, scrambling his vision of the house into an abstract view of swirling dark colors before him. He shut his eyes tightly and squeezed the tears out, just like wringing out a towel into a tub, only the towel is so damp it keeps dripping.

It’s impossible to believe what happened. Where would he have foreseen this? Claus, going off on his own to fight the damned thing and secure his revenge, his dad still out in the mountains looking for the lost son in question, the townsfolk who dropped their supportive action for him when the peddler with the monkey came into town. All when he needed them most. Lucas sniffled and sobbed.

The noise seemed to have alerted his one loyal companion, because Lucas heard the flap of the dog door open and close. He could barely make out a shadow near the entrance but Boney gave a mournful whine and started for the twins’ bed. The wave of relief would have swept Lucas off his feet if he weren’t already so exhausted. The innate ability to understand animals’ thoughts and feelings has never been so crucial up until this point—At least he knows that he’s not alone. He patted Claus’s side of the bed lightly and Boney jumped on without any lick of hesitation. His tongue brushed Lucas’s face, and for the first time all week, Lucas gave a weak smile. He tousled Boney’s face with his two hands and gave him an endearing head scratch.

Boney spun around, trying to find just the right position to get comfortable in. Finally settling down, his head rested next to Lucas’s belly and outstretched his paws so he could lay his chin on them. Lucas gently and repeatedly stroked his backside, smoothing down stray tufts of fur.

“What is it, boy? You miss Mom and Claus too?” Lucas spoke hoarsely.

Boney cried a quiet affirmation.

“...But you’re more worried about me?”

He whined in response.

Lucas kept on playing with Boney’s fur, but kept quiet. He was gazing at nothing in particular; in this moment his mind finally felt like it was slowing down. Having just realized he was holding his breath, Lucas let it go with a quivering exhale.

His dog was warm and cozied up the bed; just as it had been when he slept next to Claus. The instinctual comfort of having warmth that was not his own resting beside him... It formed a knot in his throat. Lucas has had recurring nightmares since the two disasters that shattered his life on that one devastating day that delivered to him an unexpected turn of fate. They weren’t gory so much as they were psychologically traumatizing. But the worst part to him was, when rocketing from his sleep, eyes wide and lungs galvanized, there would be no one to go to. No person to rouse and crawl up next to for comfort to shield from the demons and regrettably truthful fabrications that plagued his waking subconscious.

Lucas rolled over and could hear his heart pit-a-pat through his pillow, like a monster inside waiting until he falls asleep to devour his head or the boots of tiny soldiers marching in unison. He was sensitive, and his anxiety made him creative, but it was always this detrimental type that only conveyed itself negatively and in times of heightened disquietude. This too carried itself into his dreams. Claus would be back like nothing had happened, but his face fallen into the realm of the uncanny. And Lucas’s gut could tell he was something artificial, a false semblance, from a manifestation of deep-seated terrors that weren’t readily apparent. Perhaps his eyes were millimeters too far apart, or his irises shades too dark. He’d have the remnants of a recent nosebleed and chapped lips, ripped skin on his cuticles. The lack of dimples when he smiled. It wasn’t like looking in a mirror any longer. Lucas feared he had forgotten what his brother looked like—who even he himself looked like, as whenever he dared look in the mirror and view the golden nest held upon his scalp and bloodshot eyes from exhaustion and crying, he could swear, he saw the ghastly hallucinations of his mother from the corners of his vision in the reflected room. She’d be missing from the frame after he rubbed his eyes.

Claus would take his hand and drag him outside where the sun shone directly at the zenith, leaving eerie 90-degree shadows across a field of sunflowers, the sea of which seemingly had no end, and each and every one of those tens of thousands in the ocean of yellows and browns pointed exactly upward towards the luminous and almost fake sunlight. Lucas felt his stomach drop to his toes when the expanse of flowers stopped looking directly at the sun and whose brown disks were all suddenly focused straight at him. Rows upon rows upon rows upon rows of endless heads, each carrying the seeds of two thousand more, staring him down, and nothing more beyond the horizon. And in his legs, suddenly, he sensed the urge to _run_ , to run away as fast as his they could carry him. But where could he go? Where could he go? The question echoed in his brain until it violently shook him from his horrifically lucid dream. His eyes would snap open like shutters and his legs would still be stinging from the searing phantom lactic acid deep in his muscles, aching until his chest panted and his throat cried out to his lonely ranch. But he had Boney.

With Boney by his side he could instead pretend that rather than menacing footsteps gradually approaching him, the beat of his heart in his pillow was his mother’s as he snuggled up to her. He felt warmth bubble up from inside him at this thought, and relaxed instinctively. Oh, had he felt the imaginary embrace in his mind flower into something so real.

Lucas clasped his arms around his pillow, and smiled, genuinely. A wave of coziness swept through his body—from his head, to his heart, to his toes—as one would have when cuddled into a cocoon. The type of comfort one gets when their limbs are packed into their sleeping bag by a toasty fire while camping out in the wilderness; where they feel safe from the dangers and of the world and the anxieties derived from them.

Boney managed to snuggle up closer to him, planting his furry little chin on the boy’s back. Lucas imagined this as Claus’s arm—or leg, if he was sleeping weird like he did sometimes—just barely crossing his backside. Laying like that, they both breathed steadily.

“Thank you, Boney,” Lucas said. “For looking out for me.  
He paused for a few moments.  
“I love you.”

His dog wagged his tail, the sound of it swishing along the sheets.


End file.
